Thomas Farr, President Donald Trump’s racist judicial nominee who has spent decades working to disenfranchise Black voters, will lose his confirmation battle. He can thank the Republican Party’s only Black U.S. Senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina (photo), for his defeat.
“I am ready and willing to support strong candidates for our judicial vacancies that do not have lingering concerns about issues that could affect their decision-making process as a federal judge,” Scott said in a statement to the Senate, McClatchy reports. “This week, a Department of Justice memo written under President George H.W. Bush was released that shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activities. This, in turn, created more concerns. Weighing these important factors, this afternoon I concluded that I could not support Mr. Farr’s nomination.”
That memo detailed that “Farr was the primary coordinator “of a 1984 program that included “a postcard mailing to voters in predominantly black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to challenge voters on election day.”
That was far from Farr’s only effort to stop Black people from voting.
Farr represented North Carolina’s GOP Senators and defended in court their grotesquely gerrymandered districts that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled disenfranchised Blacks with “almost surgical precision.”
Senator Scott’s decision will end Farr’s nomination. Also opposing Farr, in addition to every Democratic U.S. Senator, was Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ).
Farr has been called, “probably the most unqualified, insensitive, uninformed, incompetent attorney,” by U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC).